a little too far, Doc?”
He felt in his pocket. “I’m going to take them a great deal farther, Miss Meriden. As far as I’m concerned you can go to blazes’ and stay there, but you’re going to apologise to me first. Now then..” He put the contents of his breast pocket on the bench. “Passport and identity card, forged of course, but nice pieces of work. Then there’s a document accrediting me to the International Red Cross organisation. Again forged. And there’s this letter appointing me to the staff of the Kingsland Road Eye Hospital. That’s a risky one, of course, because you can easily telephone the hospital and check on it. But the bluff usually works. Take a look, Miss Meriden.”
She was watching him now. His eye met hers. Then she stepped forward and, picking up the papers, glanced through them quickly. He watched her vindictively. When she came to the letter she paused, then went back to the beginning of it and read again.
“Well?” he demanded.
Suddenly she began to laugh.
He stared at her angrily.
She went on laughing. “Oh dear, oh dear,” she gasped, “my dear Dr. Maclaren, I do apologise, but really…” A fresh paroxysm seized her. “I’m truly sorry,” she managed at last, “but you must see how funny it is… ‘Blusters when challenged.’… Oh dear! I am so sorry…”
And then Andrew began to laugh too.
After a bit it was arranged that he should stay to lunch.
Over the pie, which emerged eventually from the oven, he told her the story from the beginning. But when he paused expectantly at the point where the Mary Isabella came into it, she looked blank.
“I still don’t see what all this has to do with me,” she said. “Is the Mary Isabella important?”
“Well, it should be. It’s a yawl-rigged fishing craft and your father bought it in Yugoslavia before the war.”
“My father?”
“Isn’t John Quayle Meriden your father?” She sighed wearily and without replying got up from the table.
“What’s the matter? Isn’t he your father?”
She gripped the back of a chair firmly. “My father,” she said a trifle bitterly, “died when I was five. John Meriden was my uncle and my guardian.”
“Was?”
“He died four months ago. I am his heiress.”
“Oh.”
She flung an arm out dramatically. “You see this house?”
“Yes, indeed.”
“Mine. You saw that rubbish in the grounds?”
“It was difficult to miss.”
“Mine.” She sat down again somewhat violently and leaned across the remains of the pie. “Uncle John,” she said venomously, “was what polite people call an eccentric. In fact, he was what the Americans call a jerk. He made his money betting on the Stock Exchange. He was on the lunatic fringe. He bought anything he thought looked like a bargain-anything worthless going cheap. Where near-idiots feared to tread, Uncle John clumped in with both feet. But when any near-idiot would have lost his shirt-if you can follow the metaphors-Uncle John, the full and complete idiot, hit the jackpot. Not once, but four times! He’d have soon lost the lot again, of course, in the ordinary way and serve the old fool right. Unfortunately, he had an honest stockbroker to deal with and this idealist absolutely refused to handle any more of Uncle John’s fancy business. He said it was silly. Either Uncle John put his fancy money in some decent securities or he could take his account elsewhere. In what must have been Uncle John’s last moment of sanity, he agreed. But that was his last moment. From then on he became the world’s number one bargain-hunting nitwit. Anything going cheap he bought. You see this house? A fleabite! There’s stuff all over the world as far as I can see. Bargains! It was snuffboxes one week, anchors the next. A steam yacht, a 1922 Grand Prix racing car… do you know why I went to Yugoslavia?” “I was wondering that.”
“He even bought a palace! A palace! I ask you! That’s why I had to go. There’s the Yugoslav Bureau of Alien Property mixed up in it. I had to go in person to agree to an inventory and sign papers. We’ll end up by owing them money of course. You see, he collected lawsuits as well.”
“What about fishing boats?”
“Wait a minute. I’m trying to think. Zavrana’s the port near this ridiculous palace of his-of mine that is. Uncle John was at Zavrana with the yacht, Moonlight. Moonlight! A silly great tub of a thing that ran away with a fortune. If I wanted a few pounds for schooling, you’d have thought I was asking for the earth. But he spent enough on Moonlight in a week to educate an army. There wouldn’t have been a penny left if the Admiralty hadn’t requisitioned her during the war. Luckily she was sunk, so it may not be so bad in the end. Uncle John wouldn’t settle for the compensation they offered, but I shall. At least I think so. Nobody knows yet whether the estate’s bankrupt or solvent.”
“Isn’t there anyone who can help you?”
“There’s Aunt Clara in Brussels.”
“Is that the one who met you at the airport?”
“Yes, but she’s nearly as dotty as Uncle John.”
“What about Mary Isabella?”
“Oh yes. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to run on so. I’ve been thinking. There was something about a boat. The Yugoslavs wanted to know if Uncle John had taken it to England with Moonlight.”
“And did he?”
“I don’t know.”
“Perhaps he did. Kusitch must have thought it was here if he’d come all the way here to look for it.”
“But how do you know he was looking for it?” she asked.
“I’m guessing. Did your uncle never mention the boat at any time?”
She sighed. “He mentioned so many things. There might be a note about it in one of his diaries.” “Diaries?”
It seemed that, characteristically, Uncle John had been an inveterate diarist. For years he had made it a habit to write down all the dullest happenings in his life from day to day. If he had ever heard of the craft again, he would surely have recorded the fact. The difficulty would be to comb through the books. There were quite a number of them.
“They’re in the Battery Office downstairs,” Ruth Meriden explained. “The gunners left some useful shelving. Shall we go down?”
The room was small and overcrowded. A pine folding table of a stark military pattern was straining under the weight of ceramics and more statuary. Great jars that looked like stage properties for the Forty Thieves stood on the floor, and there were a few broken chairs to complete the junk-shop effect. The shelving climbed all the way up one wall and it was piled with a varied collection of books in heavy bindings. Stacked against the other walls, or leaning here and there in solitary state, were great oil paintings in monstrous gilt frames. A portly figure in mayoral fur and chains of office stared challengingly across at another portly figure in a navy blue jacket and white yachting cap.
“Uncle John,” Ruth Meriden explained.
“Both of them?”
“Both of them.”
The man had a terrifying jauntiness, and an equally terrifying complacency. The twinkle in the eye and the cocksureness of the carriage told you that life must have been lots of fun for John Quayle Meriden, though the obstinate mouth and the idiot-blue eyes might make you doubt whether it had been quite so funny for the people who had had to deal with him. You could be sure, anyway, that he had exacted some devotion to his interests. He looked very well fed and cared for. Someone had polished up that chain of office till it shone. Someone had pressed those nautical slacks till they were fit for the commodore of any fleet. He was king baby with a teething ring suspended from his neck. He was mother’s little sailor boy just before he was sick over his nice new uniform. He was egotism incarnate. He had been, as Miss Meriden had indicated, a jerk.
The diaries were readily distinguishable from the rest of the books. They were of a quarto shape issued annually by a firm of stationers, and quite uniform except for slight variations in binding style over the years. They
